It has been a while ago since I received this book for review, initially I started reading it on my way to Exchange Connections in Las Vegas on my iPad mini. And the last few weeks I finished reading the book. So what do I think of the book? The book is a must have resource for everyone who is working with Exchange 2013. Tony Redmond is amazing good in describing the several parts of Exchange related to mailbox and high availability. Yes you are reading it correct this book only describes the mailbox an high availability of Exchange 2013. For the Client Access ,Connectivity and UM part of Exchange 2013 you will have to read the book from Paul Robichaux.

Tony starts with describing some important things you will have to consider when implementing Exchange 2013. This starts with a discussion about the architecture and continuous with several decisions you have to make before implementing Exchange 2013. Then he continuous to describe which preparations you have to make before you can implement Exchange 2013. After these topics have been described Tony describes how to install it and the basic management tools you will need to use to manage your Exchange 2013 and in more detail how to manage your mailboxes.

Starting from chapter 8 the book makes a very deep dive. For those who are already familiar with Exchange 2013 and want to skip the basic things this is were you should start reading the book. In very deep detail Tony describes several topics among them:

how does the store work

the database availability group

migrating mailboxes

compliance management

public folders and site mailboxes

For example in the how does the store work chapter will describe what is under the hood of the store. When you have read this chapter you will probably have a better understanding of the store process and how complex the product Exchange is under the hood. After the store is described the book continuous with the database availability group. In this chapter Tony describes several topics related to the DAG including: design considerations, daily administration tasks and several important components of the DAG among them the active manager.

Once the mailbox and high availability part have been discussed the book continues with the mailbox migration process. In this chapter the components are discussed which are key components of the migration process and of course how to perform the migration. This is not limited to only the cmdlets but also contains several practical tips from Tony about planning.

Some people are already working with the compliance part but some haven’t probably touched it. Both groups will benefit from this chapter as it describes some basic things but contains enough detail so people with experience will also learn a lot from this chapter. Compliance is a topic which becomes more important now-a-days since more and more companies will start implementing it either due to company regulations or government regulations.

In the last chapter Tony describes one of the probably most discussed topics of Exchange. Will it be there in the next release? How long will Microsoft Public Folders? These are just a few questions you will hear every time during the development phase of the next version of Exchange. In Exchange 2013 the Public Folders have changed a lot since the public folders can now be part of a normal mailbox database so no separate public folder database anymore. But how to get from the “legacy” Public Folder to the “new” Public Folder. Read Tony’s book and you have some good info on how to do this.

So what’s the conclusion of this review? The book is a must read for everybody who works with Exchange. It does not contain the basic information which most books do but describes several things in very deep detail. Besides this Tony also provides some additional information which really adds value to the book.

So if you got curious about the book just press the link below to buy the book: